End-Game Dragooning

Alright, couldn't find a Dragoon thread so I thought I'd make one.

Couple of questions about end game stats for dragoons. Which ones are the priority? Obviously STR gear is our main, not DEX. But what is next on the list? I see three big stats that come along with STR. Usually they are Skill Speed, Determination and Critical Strike Rating. Which is our priority and in what order? Also, what is the Accuracy cap for end game?

Also, I really need to work out a rotation on abilities. Right now I am just doing Heavy Thrust, Phlebotimize, (warrior's DoT), then the basic three ability combo (True, Vorpal, Full). I run through the basic ability combo twice before I reapply HT, PL and the warrior DoT and then wash, rinse and repeat. Am I doing this wrong? Do I need to add Choas Thrust into the rotation somewhere? From the abilities that it combos with it seems to not be as beneficial as just the standard combo.

Well, if you're running as Dragoon, I'm guessing you mean you're in a party. I found DRG to be a bit restrictive with it's cross-class skills, so if I'm solo, I'm still running as Lancer to have nice cross-class stuff (Protect mainly, but there's a lot of stuff). Yes, you wind up with another outfit to maintain, but it's not like it's that difficult (with Dragoon Soul, without Dragoon Soul).

I don't like his rotation, mostly because he suggests to use Leg Sweep rotationaly. Really it's pretty lame that the stun has a damage component to it. It's much like having to macro Silencing shot to all your attacks back in Wrath, because it was off the GCD and did damage...

Originally Posted by Winstonwolfe

In other words, he's worried about how sharp your bayonet is when you are firing RPG's.

I don't like his rotation, mostly because he suggests to use Leg Sweep rotationaly. Really it's pretty lame that the stun has a damage component to it. It's much like having to macro Silencing shot to all your attacks back in Wrath, because it was off the GCD and did damage...

It sucks for some gimmick fights but otherwise its nice to have that extra button to weave inbetween combos. Also, try breaking 250 dps without it.

Also, I really need to work out a rotation on abilities. Right now I am just doing Heavy Thrust, Phlebotimize, (warrior's DoT), then the basic three ability combo (True, Vorpal, Full). I run through the basic ability combo twice before I reapply HT, PL and the warrior DoT and then wash, rinse and repeat. Am I doing this wrong? Do I need to add Choas Thrust into the rotation somewhere? From the abilities that it combos with it seems to not be as beneficial as just the standard combo.

Your rotation needs help. First I recommend writing a few macros for your two main combo attacks and your bleeds to save action bar space. Without the combo the damage for these abilities individually are drastically reduced (well not the bleeds but you want both up with relatively close timers) you'll never use these abilities alone our out of order because the combo is that important to your dps.

You can also add a message at the end to tell you when its complete if its easier something like:

/echo Combo is Complete!

I also recommend macro'ing Power Surge with Jump and Spineshatter Dive. Since there is no GCD for those abilities they look a little different:

/ac "Power Surge"
/ac "Jump" <t>

and

/ac "Power Surge"
/ac "Spineshatter Dive" <t>

Start off with a flanking Heavy Thrust to get your +damage on all attacks. Follow up with a Impulse Drive from behind to proc your Disembowel combo. Use macro # 3 to add slashing and dot vulnerability with those two abilities. Follow up with macro #2 to add your two bleeds to the target. Then use Heavy Thrust again to refresh your +damage buff followed by macro #1. After macro #1 completes, reapply dots with macro #2. Here, depending on the time left of your buff, you can either go back to a behind target impulse drive and reapply debuffs with macro #3 or you can try and fit in another full macro#1 and then get behind with the Impulse Drive etc.

Its very important to keep your buffs and debuffs up at all times. Obviously you have some situational things to add in, but this is my rotation for the base abilities.

Additional tip: Looking at the target recital, you'll noticed about 1/4 of the circle is missing. Specifically right behind the target. This is not terrain clipping but an actual visual of where the targets flank ends and the targets rear begins. You can put yourself right on that line and only have to move a slight step side to side for flanking and attacking the rear. The less distance back and forth the better for your DPS.

Ive heard that macros automatically round up the wait timers to the nearest second, so your 2.5 will end up being 3.0. Not sure if this is true, but if it is then the macro is only good as training wheels.

Ive heard that macros automatically round up the wait timers to the nearest second, so your 2.5 will end up being 3.0. Not sure if this is true, but if it is then the macro is only good as training wheels.

Thanks for catching that mistake! Corrected.

I havent heard that about marco's and will be sorely disappointed if thats the case as macro's become sorta broken. However watching my action bar I see the next move go off as soon as the GCD is up so I think its accurate. Ill try and test tonight, there will be a shit storm tomorrow if it is rounding up believe you me lol.

Edit: I do see some people on Reddit saying that, but cant find anything confirmed. However we are talking .5 of a second which probably takes that long for my brain to register the GCD is up anyways lol. The nice thing though is Im sure using marco's negates input lag on those abilities that come after the first so it probably balances out in the end.

Your rotation needs help. First I recommend writing a few macros for your two main combo attacks and your bleeds to save action bar space. Without the combo the damage for these abilities individually are drastically reduced (well not the bleeds but you want both up with relatively close timers) you'll never use these abilities alone our out of order because the combo is that important to your dps.

You can also add a message at the end to tell you when its complete if its easier something like:

/echo Combo is Complete!

I also recommend macro'ing Power Surge with Jump and Spineshatter Dive. Since there is no GCD for those abilities they look a little different:

/ac "Power Surge"
/ac "Jump" <t>

and

/ac "Power Surge"
/ac "Spineshatter Dive" <t>

Start off with a flanking Heavy Thrust to get your +damage on all attacks. Follow up with a Impulse Drive from behind to proc your Disembowel combo. Use macro # 3 to add slashing and dot vulnerability with those two abilities. Follow up with macro #2 to add your two bleeds to the target. Then use Heavy Thrust again to refresh your +damage buff followed by macro #1. After macro #1 completes, reapply dots with macro #2. Here, depending on the time left of your buff, you can either go back to a behind target impulse drive and reapply debuffs with macro #3 or you can try and fit in another full macro#1 and then get behind with the Impulse Drive etc.

Its very important to keep your buffs and debuffs up at all times. Obviously you have some situational things to add in, but this is my rotation for the base abilities.

Additional tip: Looking at the target recital, you'll noticed about 1/4 of the circle is missing. Specifically right behind the target. This is not terrain clipping but an actual visual of where the targets flank ends and the targets rear begins. You can put yourself right on that line and only have to move a slight step side to side for flanking and attacking the rear. The less distance back and forth the better for your DPS.

I'm curious, looking at your macros it doesn't seem like you can weave in any jumps or Life surge?

While the macros that Phil used are wonderful, you can get a little more bang for your buck if you used some macros like the Rotation Reborn thread has. Macro's like the following will greatly benifit you for single target DPS and should make your life a little easier.

/ac "Blood for Blood"
/ac "Phlebotomize"

/ac "Life Surge"
/ac "Full Thrust"

/ac "Power Surge"
/ac "Impulse Drive"

/ac "Jump"
/ac "Disembowel"

/ac "Internal Release"
/ac "Chaos Thrust"

This will make sure that your damage increasing abilities will always go off before your most important abilities. You can also have the cooldowns on a second bar and hit them manually if you need a big burst of damage, but if you are following the optimal rotation or priority system, you should be able to make good use of the above macros.

I strongly suggest you do not use sequence combo macros for the end game as you will not be able to adapt to situations.

Please explain. Vorpal and Full Thrust damage is seriously reduced without the full combo. Why would you Disembowel without following up with Chaos Thrust?

I'd like to know what your situational reasons for needing to use those moves outside of their combo enhancers.

Ive been using these macros in endgame for a few weeks now and have seen an increase in DPS because I am no longer blowing GCD on a Vorpal Thrust that hits as hard as a True Thrust or hitting Chaos Thrust that is not adding a dot debuff.

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Originally Posted by Ravex

I'm curious, looking at your macros it doesn't seem like you can weave in any jumps or Life surge?

You can weave in anything you want. The macros are designed to free up hotbar space and guarantee those moves are being used at 100% effectiveness. I also posted jump macro's that should be enhanced with Power Surge.

However, I think Jumps are sorta lame. Getting locked into an animation at the wrong time happens all to often. The damage output is minimal in respect to other abilities. The only thing I jump really has going for it is not being affected by the GCD. Lots of debate on whether to even use Jump. I say use it, but I don't build my rotation around it or find it to be a intricate part, especially with a 90sec CD and the fact it hits like a wet noodle. Id like to see SE do some work on it. I dont want to be locked into a 4 second animation, Id like it to hit a lot harder, and brought down to a 30sec CD or maybe even proc based like when you dodge. Hell Id even be happy with its current damage if it was proc based.

Please explain. Vorpal and Full Thrust damage is seriously reduced without the full combo. Why would you Disembowel without following up with Chaos Thrust?

I'd like to know what your situational reasons for needing to use those moves outside of their combo enhancers.

Ive been using these macros in endgame for a few weeks now and have seen an increase in DPS because I am no longer blowing GCD on a Vorpal Thrust that hits as hard as a True Thrust or hitting Chaos Thrust that is not adding a dot debuff.

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You can weave in anything you want. The macros are designed to free up hotbar space and guarantee those moves are being used at 100% effectiveness. I also posted jump macro's that should be enhanced with Power Surge.

However, I think Jumps are sorta lame. Getting locked into an animation at the wrong time happens all to often. The damage output is minimal in respect to other abilities. The only thing I jump really has going for it is not being affected by the GCD. Lots of debate on whether to even use Jump. I say use it, but I don't build my rotation around it or find it to be a intricate part, especially with a 90sec CD and the fact it hits like a wet noodle. Id like to see SE do some work on it. I dont want to be locked into a 4 second animation, Id like it to hit a lot harder, and brought down to a 30sec CD or maybe even proc based like when you dodge. Hell Id even be happy with its current damage if it was proc based.

I did not say not to use the combo themselves, but it's a horrible practice to use them in macro.

You want full control of when and how to execute your abilities. For example, you may want to weave damage CD skills between combos or perhaps you want to save them to pop during adds to burst them down. Maybe mob is being kited and you are not in melee range while the sequence macro is in progress.

I can't be sure but I heard /wait command rounds up to whole number. If this is true, those fraction of seconds will eventually add up and result in DPS loss.

Also, Blood for Blood can be fatal to slap in macro, as it could kill you during AoE damage with that extra 25% damage taken. You want full control of when and how you want to use it.

You typically want to macro with single action abilities with off GCD ones or ones target or marking related functions. There are situations where you would macro together multiple action abilities but only if there are specific conditions that allow you to use without being conflicted. (For PLD, if you macro melee attack with Shield Lob, Shield Lob will only execute if the target is not in melee range. For ARC, you can macro Misery's End with Straight Shot and the Misery's End will be ignored and execute Straight Shot until the target is 20% or under)

Again, my advice is aimed at people doing end-game contents. You can get away with those lazy macros on easy stuff.

I see, thank you for that explanation. Just so you know you can weave in non-GCD abilities into your combo macro's with proper timing without breaking the macro chain. But I can see where the marco's might be an issue when the mob is being moved, however I have not seen any endgame where I need to pause damage and upon resume priority doesn't shift to refreshing dots or buffs or debuffs essentially breaking the combo chain anyways.

Also it rounds up, but not by a full number. 2.5 = 3 per what people are saying. However, I think it may balance out because you might be eliminating input lag on the second and third ability. But that's not confirmed either.

I see, thank you for that explanation. Just so you know you can weave in non-GCD abilities into your combo macro's with proper timing without breaking the macro chain. But I can see where the marco's might be an issue when the mob is being moved, however I have not seen any endgame where I need to pause damage and my first concerns are not refreshing dots, buffs, or debuffs essentially breaking the combo chain anyways.

Also it rounds up, but not by a full number. 2.5 = 3 per what people are saying. However, I think it may balance out because you might be eliminating input lag on the second and third ability. But that's not confirmed either.

That's what it mean by rounding up to whole number, no decimals. I highly doubt the input lag thing balancing it out as you can manually press next ability slightly before you see the global CD being up anyway.

Also, never use or macro together Spineshatter Dive with Power Surge. Jump has higher potency and you want to use it with it much as possible. Spineshatter Dive is mainly used as a gap closer unless there is a need for silence/stun rotation need during the boss fight, in which case, you do not want to use it at all.

Cool trival fact: You can use Jump to bypass re-positioning mechanics.

The second boss of AK, Demon Wall uses Repel ability to push people backward. If you use Jump right before it finishes casting, you will see yourself getting pushed back while on the air and then teleport back to where you started, back in front of the boss. If you start this way too close to boss, it will try land behind the boss (the boss moves up right after casting Repel) in which case you will be forced to load back in front of the door behind. Since you are not allowed go pass the boss until he's dead.

I also thought about macroing my rotations to free up the number of keys i need to press, but i realised i do kinda enjoy pressing 9 different buttons. It gives a challenge in the priority system.

Mainly for me, its always about keeping the dots up. Followed by Combos, although due to the different in the debuffs durations (fracture, chaos thrust, phelobotomise etc), i don't think we have a full set rotation that can be just mindlessly spammed.

And i agree with the one who said never ever macro your dmg increasing abilities to a macro, as those are situational (heavy burst during titan heart etc). Its better to leave cooldowns for when and where you want to use it instead of always having it up the moment it comes off.

I also thought about macroing my rotations to free up the number of keys i need to press, but i realised i do kinda enjoy pressing 9 different buttons. It gives a challenge in the priority system.

Mainly for me, its always about keeping the dots up. Followed by Combos, although due to the different in the debuffs durations (fracture, chaos thrust, phelobotomise etc), i don't think we have a full set rotation that can be just mindlessly spammed.

And i agree with the one who said never ever macro your dmg increasing abilities to a macro, as those are situational (heavy burst during titan heart etc). Its better to leave cooldowns for when and where you want to use it instead of always having it up the moment it comes off.

Also fun to see BfB killing a drg when they use it for the golem mob during turn 1 trash clear.